Ben Smith

Editor-in-chiefBuzzFeed

Ben Smith is the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. He joined BuzzFeed in January 2012. He is responsible for overseeing and expanding editorial coverage. Prior to BuzzFeed, Smith was senior political writer for Politico from 2007 to 2011, where he wrote a daily blog that Time Magazine named as one of the Five Essential Blogs in 2010.

Smith covered the Democratic presidential primary, with a focus on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Before Politico, he wrote a column and a blog for New York’s Daily News.

Smith has written for many leading publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, the New York Post, The New Republic, Legal Affairs, Reason and In These Times.

Smith graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a degree in Linguistics. He was born and raised in Manhattan, and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.

Session

Thu 22 June 2017 4:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Will BuzzFeed become a legacy media of the 21st century?

On 10 January 2017, BuzzFeed published a 35-page dossier of classified documents that claimed Russia had compromising personal and financial information about Donald Trump. It was the beginning of a huge controversy between US journalists and media experts. Some were supportive of BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the report, others criticised it, calling it an unverified […]